


Sloppy Spirographs

by chronologicalimplosion



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Homestuck Shipping Olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-02
Updated: 2012-08-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 06:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/475518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronologicalimplosion/pseuds/chronologicalimplosion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aradia Megido is here, and she needs to be over there. Simple. Easy as pie. Ribbit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sloppy Spirographs

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the HSO Bonus Round 3 (Retro Gaming) based upon Frogger. Yeah. that's really all you need to know.

Timeline 1.0  
She has come to accept that the voices move in strange ways, that questioning them is not an option and it only ever works to fulfill the fate she is trapped to. Usually more painfully. She is 0kay with this. But the mess of sharp crystals and moving gears before her is intimidating. It looks like the kind of thing that, while it cannot truly kill her when she is dead already, could very easily crush her body with the wrong move. True, she could maneuver through it far more easily as a sprite, but she also didn't fancy attempting to play through the rest of the game without a corporeal body, and even with control over Time, they couldn't really afford the time or resources needed to build another one.

The voices told her to go, that it would be okay, but she missteped early on and was crushed in the second row of gears, metal between metal. With the last of her energy, she spun her way backwards so that her crushed metallic corpse would be a warning, then made the way with the rest of her to the endgame.

Timeline 1.05  
She already had a fair deal of trepidation, and then there is what is definitely a dead her in the workings of the colossal music box. Her too-strong-then-not-there-at-all emotions do strange things, but she wills them away. She needs to be a sprite now. Needs to be a sprite in so many ways, but since she's going to need to be a robot in the future, all she can have is mental spritedom. A not-so-quiet _ribbit_ tears itself out of her throat before she launches in.

She makes it almost to the end of the first row of gears, and then she follows in the footsteps of her sister self.

Timeline 1.2  
By analyzing the mistakes she made before, by listening to the voices and taking opportunities as soon as they present themselves, she makes it all the way past the first cluster of gears this time. Makes it to a temporary rest, and then there's an imp, unexpected, and it distracts her and disorients her and she's unprepared. She stumbles forward to attack it, and she misses, and her momentum carries her on, and then, yet again, she is crushed.

Timeline 1.3  
Enough with the same death, now. She is careful of the gears-- _all of them_ \--and the various other moving bits of machine. What she never considers is that gears come flush against things other than other gears sometimes, and while holding onto a safe spot for a bit too long, she becomes crushed between the gear and the wall.

Timeline 1.5  
It's really not that long of a stretch to traverse, though all of the bodies make it seem like miles. So long as she pays complete attention to her surroundings and not anyone else, it's not that hard.

At least, that's what she thinks until she realizes that this player piston, still for so long, is apparently not still because it's been left out of the song. She really should know better, living in the land of Quartz and Melody, but the sudden dip was too much and she lost her grip and plummeted to her death.

Timeline 1.6  
Time travel usually only makes things more complicated. Apparently gear-jumping is no exception.

Timeline 1.9  
There it is. Right in her sight, the exit hole she's been aiming for for she-doesn't-want-to-know-how-many doomed timelines. All she has to do is jump from the last piston to the little alcove, and then she can progress again like she always had. Leave this mess behind her.

Her footing slips, as she jumps, and she finds herself impaled on a spike of quartz crystal.

Timeline 2.0  
The voices are telling her to go, so she really should go. But there are robotic parts and mangled copies of herself strewn around the clockwork before her, and maybe it's just her robotic heart at work, but she does not want to go any farther. Let the voices and her accompanying fate do what they will to her, nothing can be worse than being stuck in a death loop like that, hopelessly throwing herself at the machine again and again until something finally breaks.

She's willing to break first, will-wise, if it means she doesn't have to break anymore.

So she stands and stares for a while, entranced as her own personal clockwork is brushed aside by the movements of the giant clockwork before her, doubtless falling to the pit below. Machine versus machine, and her little insignificant form is never going to make a dent in the intricate monstrosity she's up against.

After a long, timeless while, she has a moment of brilliance. Detaching herself from the artificial limbs and heart to be her blood-colored spriteself again, she captchalogues the robotic prosthetic and floats easily though the deadly maze. She'll miss it for a while, she thinks, but the spirits will let her have it again when she needs it--in one piece.


End file.
